Protest Song Quotes & Sayings

Tomorrow I shall write something beautiful, something so serene
that storms will rise suddenly and protest with ferocious screams.
I shall write poems for the poets and for the songster a single song
That will tell a tale of such beauty the heart of earth shall moan.
But today, today shall be special for all I will do
is sit quietly alone and think of you and think of you. — Tonny K. Brown

When I sang my American folk melodies in Budapest, Prague, Tiflis, Moscow, Oslo, or the Hebrides or on the Spanish front, the people understood and wept or rejoiced with the spirit of the songs. I found that where forces have been the same, whether people weave, build, pick cotton, or dig in the mine, they understand each other in the common language of work, suffering, and protest. — Paul Robeson

thinking of us, our struggles and pain, grieves in me a song more dismal than the sparrows' protest to the morning rain — John J. Geddes

I love music. I love making songs. I feel like I've been given a path where I can contribute, where I can protest if somebody does something really obviously wrong or inhuman right in front of me, where I can make a difference. Where I can most especially elevate, make you happy, elevate the condition, elevate the thing. — David Crosby

The Supreme Court must strike down the government's illegal spying program as a violation of our Fourth Amendment right to privacy. — Rand Paul

In the largest sense, every work of art is protest ... A lullaby is a propaganda song and any three-year-old knows it ... A hymn is a controversial song - sing one in the wrong church: you'll find out ... — Pete Seeger

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he's a victim of the times.
I wear the black for those who never read — Johnny Cash

The hardest song to write is a protest song, a topical song with meaning. — Joan Baez

For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying. — Abraham Joshua Heschel

The nice thing about a protest song is that it takes the complaint, the fussing, the finger-pointing, and gives it an added component of sociable harmony. — Nicholson Baker

I understand why people get desensitized and roll their eyes when they hear a protest song, or even a politician making some flowery speech. It doesn't really change anything. — Conor Oberst

We are all connected to spirit, in our physical manifestation and our soul. — Linda Masanimptewa

In the '60s, when I was growing up, one of the great elements of American culture was the protest song. There were songs about the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement, the antiwar movement. It wasn't just Bob Dylan, it was everybody at the time. — George Clooney

We can't forget what happened on May 4th, 1970, when four students gave up their lives because they had the American constitutional right of peaceful protest. They gave up their lives. And to sing that song in that spot on that anniversary was very emotional for us. — Graham Nash

We thought that using rap would draw a parallel with the protest music from the 60s and 70s that we found through the research for animadoc. When we thought about rap, Emicida immediately came to mind and we decided to call him to create this song bring the audience back to earth and put their feet on the ground. Emicida's song is the only one that has lyrics in actual understandable Portuguese. — Alex Abreu

You can write the most detailed, vivid description of an ax entering a skull, and nobody will say a word in protest. But if you write a similarly detailed description of a penis entering a vagina, you get letters from people saying they'll never read you again. What the hell? Penises entering vaginas bring a lot more joy into the world than axes entering skulls. — George R R Martin

No one is saved alone, as an isolated individual, but God attracts us looking at the complex web of relationships that take place in the human community. God enters into this dynamic, this participation in the web of human relationships. — Pope Francis

He thought to himself that there could be no greater torture in the world than at the same time to love and to contemn. — W. Somerset Maugham

It's crazy to close doors to any genres. — David Lynch

A protest song is a song
that's so specific that you
cannot mistake it for bullshit — Phil Ochs

I won't be indulging in anger anymore, vehemently and self-righteously singing protest songs, and expecting them to bring peace to me or anyone else. — Susan Schneider

Americans have swapped the awkward phrase "same-sex marriage" for the term "marriage equality." The phrase is ordinarily employed to mean that same-sex couples will have the rights different-sexed couples do. But it could also mean that marriage is between equals. That's not what traditional marriage was. — Rebecca Solnit

Close encounters are bad. Bad for the animal, as it causes stress, and bad for me for exactly the same reason. — Nigel Dennis

Propositions are true or false. Images are not. — Gene Edward Veith Jr.